2014 F1 season

There is little to choose between the range of different nose solutions seen on this year’s F1 cars in terms of performance, according to Ferrari’s chassis technical director James Allison.

The radically different noses have attracted considerable attention, mainly due to their aesthetic shortcomings.

“If you look around in the pit lane you’ll see there’s a different nose on every car,” Allison commented. “And there’s not too much similarity between any of the cars.”

“The reason for that is the nose rules allow quite a lot of geometrical freedom. So you go off exploring that freedom. The reason there isn’t a single solution is it’s not actually that sensitive an area so there’s lots and lots of different solutions that work.

“I came from another team before [Lotus] and that has a very aggressive solution, worked on that at the team, and ours has got another solution.

“But there’s really not that much in that. They’re just things that are good to talk about because they’re right up at the front of the car.”

The new regulations has stripped the cars of much of their downforce. “If you want a sort of quick rule of thumb, look at the size of the rear wings,” said Allison.

“We’ve got rear wings that are more or less Canada-type rear wings. So that’s roughly where the downforce of the car is. And also there’s not the blowing floor as there [was] last year.”

But he said the team are making rapid gains in that area. “The rules are also new rules and new rules offer up new opportunities. The rate of finding downforce is quite steep – you never know where that will slacken off but there isn’t any sign of it at the moment.”

Both Allison and Lowe said the new regulations allow for Spa- and Canada-like rear wings maximum only, which suggests to me that the range of aero trims – which were so-so wide back since at least the Nineties – should narrow further after they narrowed considerably in 2009 with the narrower rear wings.

Personally, I think a front end similar to that found on the DW12 indycar would make these cars look stunning, as most of them look pretty good at the back. Then all they’d need to do is allow the rear wing to match the width of the front wing and you could have some of the best looking cars of all time :-)

The noses might not be attractive, but they have introduced something that Formula 1 has been lacking for a while now: variety in the designs. Red Bull, Mercedes, McLaren, Williams, Lotus and Caterham have all come up with something different.